Multimedia

In this four-minute clip from 2010, CGD senior fellow William Savedoff and former vice president Ruth Levine tell the story of how CGD’s Closing the Evaluation Gap initiative led to the creation of the International Institute for Impact Evaluation (3ie), a new institute for impact evaluation. Savedoff explains that before the 3ie, there was a gap in information between the implementation of aid programs and the eventual impact of those programs. For example, we knew that schools were built, but how many children attended the school and what did they learn? Such information was not as readily available. Savedoff and Levine formed a working group that promoted two major recommendations in its final report: (1) aid agencies need to invest more in their own capacity to do impact evaluations and (2)  independent institutions need to be created to mobilize and channel funding for high-quality impact evaluations. 3ie became that organization, and with the help of CGD it is working to close the evaluation gap. Learn more about this CGD initiative here.

Efforts to design better aid programs often are hampered by the failure to evaluate what works—and what doesn’t—in existing programs. Today, the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation and other important efforts are helping fill the evaluation gap.

My guest this week is senior fellow Bill Savedoff. He was a member of the Center for Global Development’s 2004 Evaluation Gap Working Group, led by Ruth Levine, that urged and helped create a new institution for impact evaluation: the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation, or 3ie (“Triple I E”). Following a recent CGD speech by Esther Duflo on the importance of impact evaluation, I sat down with Bill to talk about how new impact evaluations are shaping development projects and policy.